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The St. Paul report: Tuesday morning, it was possible to think that we were going to have an early spring. The ground was free of snow, the sun was bright, and I saw a handful of robins. The early birds were not getting any worms, though, as the soil is still frozen.

Overnight, the temperature fell along with the snow, and it's back to looking like winter.

This slushy, cold, dreary stuff makes you appreciate the Spring and Summer days. So make education and papers happen now, and then let your fun life roll along in May, June and July. Just keep in internet touch with your Blog fans.

Today? Just today? The Midwest is dreary and gray at least 6 months through the year. It's why y'all are so uncompelling and superficially friendly in your relations. If you weren't you'd kill each other. It may even the reason why the most notorious serial killers come from your neck of the woods... Gacy, Gein, Dahmer, and those are just Chicago and Wisconsin's very own darlings. Quite a few from Kansas and Missouri, too. You guys must need more sunlight.

Other parts of the country have seen their share, but not way out of proportion to the population, like in the Midwest. And the really weird ones that do completely fucked up things with the bodies - again, Wisconsin's own: Ed Gein and Jeff Dahmer. What's up with that? Madison people, what makes you so depraved? The rest of the country wants to know!

Can't be the reason Jason - people are pretty tight-knit in the East Coast for instance. So they tend to notice when bodies go missing. Not like in the Midwest where in some parts it takes an hour's ride to get from one town to the next and people just figure that young Jeff went on walkabout or whatnot and By The Way, what's that horrendous smell comng from your room!?

But the point being that they get investigated and prosecuted too - in the course of which things like necrophilia, cannabalism and corpse fetishes would tend to, you know, stand out.

By the way, your shades look really creepy - in a D.B. Cooper sort of way. But not as creepy as if you didn't live in the sunshine state. Florida's also seen its fair share of them. Ted Bundy was the most notorious.

One of the most horrible memories I have is of wondering what happened to the old woman who always yelled at me to stop looking at her when I was fiddling in the costume shed behind the ballet studio.

Really, this woman hated us uppity "upper class" women who could see her hang her sheets out while we wondered what set of costumes could work for the next production.

Yet, it was an amiable hate until her son moved in with her and sat on her side steps ogling the pre-teen girls in leotards. Soon, the studio owners put a fence up there.

But no fence was installed between the old lady's clothes line and the costume shed.

As there were only three of us mother volunteers that regularly visited the shed, we started asking each other... you seen the old lady lately?

Come a warm spell in December there was an odor, one you will never forget once you've smelled it -- the sickly sweet smell of decaying flesh. One of three costume mommies had lived in Russia for years and told us what the horrid smell meant.

We, naturally called the cops. They came by, but the son refused to talk to them and they said they had no legal reason to search the place.

By the end of March, they smell was much, much worse. We called the cops again, but because the television was heard inside, they decided that was a sign of life and again decided they had no legal reason to enter.

Finally in April, the postman told the cops that no one had picked up the mail in 3 weeks.

The police entered, breaking down the door, and found both the son and mother dead. The son, in a a recliner in front of the still broadcasting TV and his mother dessicated in her bed. They estimated the mother had been dead since mid-December at the latest, and the son for approximately two weeks.

It only matters if someone notices, and then it matters little if the missing person isn't valued.